If you miss the sumptuous food, cheap shopping and night markets in Thailand and are hoping to travel there soon, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s not likely to happen this year.
At a webinar hosted by Mekong Tourism Coordinating Office and TravelMole last week, Chattan Kunjara Na Ayudhya, deputy governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), predicted that the Land of Smiles is unlikely to open its borders to tourists in 2020.
“There has been no talk of or timeline issued for reopening the country to inbound or outbound leisure travel during weekly Covid-19 national meetings,” he said.
The deputy governor for international marketing at TAT further explained that as part of the government’s “very, very cautious” approach to reopening borders, he does not expect Thailand to welcome tourists until at least 2021.
SINGAPORE: Singapore may have to consider replacing the two-week isolation period with a “rigorous testing regime” for arriving travellers, as part of efforts to “revive” the country’s air hub, said Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung.
In a Facebook video on Friday (Aug 14), Mr Ong said that the decline in international air travel due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has seen Singapore drop from its position as the 7th busiest airport in the world in terms of international passenger traffic.
It is now in 50th place, with just 150 aircraft movements per day, compared to more than 1,000 a day previously.
“We have tried to bring back demand in various ways. Cargo planes are still using Changi, but they are only about 5 per cent of total flights pre-COVID-19,” said Mr Ong.
“We have started to serve transfer and transit passengers, but even at its peak, they accounted for at most a third of total Changi passenger traffic. Today we are serving only a trickle of that, at 400 passenger movements a day, or 150,000 a year, compared to our pre-COVID 19 volume of close to 20 million a year,” he added.
“Our challenge is to restore passenger volume, while keeping virus transmission under control,” he said.
The transit area of Changi Airport Terminal 3 on Aug 3, 2020. (Photo: Gwyneth Teo)
Mr Ong’s National Day speech to the Ministry of Transport (MOT) was delivered last week.
Singapore needs the “same hunger and enterprise” as it did in the early 1980s when Changi Airport first opened and the country went “all out” to attract airlines to fly here, he added.
International travel could start with other countries and territories where virus transmission risk profiles are “similar to or better than” Singapore’s, he said, noting such locations made up about 40 per cent of the country’s pre-pandemic passenger volumes.
“But passenger volumes cannot be turned on and off capriciously,” he added. “We need to take sensible measures concurrently, proportionate to the risk profile of each country, and make progressive steps as we become more confident.”
These could include “unilaterally opening up” to passengers from countries and regions that have kept the coronavirus “under control”, as well as the proliferation of reciprocal green lanes for business travel and expanding them to include general travel as well.
“Serving 14 days isolation is a major deterrent to travellers, and we may have to consider replacing this with a rigorous testing regime,” he said.
“Health and economic considerations are not at odds – we will find ways to revive our air hub and keep Singapore safe.”
He said Singapore has to keep its borders open “to survive”, and needs to “connect to the world” to thrive.
“To prosper, we have to be a hub of the global economy,” he added.
Changi Airport’s Terminal 3’s transit area during the COVID-19 outbreak. (Photo: Jeremy Long)
In his speech, Mr Ong also thanked MOT, as well as the Land Transport Authority and operators SMRT and SBS Transit for the “vast improvement” in train service reliability in recent years.
“The system used to suffer a breakdown longer than five minutes for every 130,000 train-km travelled. Now it is clocking over a million train-km between such breakdowns,” he said.
He added that SMRT chief executive Neo Kian Hong had told him during a visit to Tuas Depot recently that the rail operator now devotes 70 per cent of its maintenance efforts to preventive maintenance and 30 per cent to corrective maintenance.
“A few years ago, the ratio was almost flipped the other way around. This is a clear sign that we have turned the corner,” said Mr Ong. “As they have done so many times in Singapore, engineers here have saved the day.”
“Still, this is not a declaration of victory, but a cautionary bell. What we have today is hard won. We must continue to place maintenance and engineering as a top priority.”
Mr Ong also pointed to the cost of operating and maintaining the rail network, as well as renewing ageing assets, noting the country’s MRT network would expand to 360km over the next decade, up from 230km today.
“Fare revenue is insufficient to cover these operational expenses,” he said, adding that the Government spends S$2 billion every year to subsidise the cost of running the public transport system.
“But an attractive public transport system brings about a greener, fairer and better Singapore, and help us move towards a car-lite nation,” he said.
The MOT will work with the Ministry of National Development and the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment to develop a “comprehensive sustainable development plan” for Singapore, he added.
We’ve all had a rough day or two at work. But what if your bad day was immortalised in a viral video?
A hapless Sheng Siong Supermarket cashier won some online sympathy after footage of her appearing to shed tears while getting an earful from another employee made its rounds on Facebook on Tuesday (August 11).
Posted on Facebook page All Singapore Stuff, the minute-long clip showed a covertly-filmed exchange between the two at the checkout area of one of the supermarket chain’s outlets.
The cashier, dressed in blue, dabbed at her eyes with a tissue as the employee in red questioned why she was not able to complete her stocktaking duties.
“When you have no customers, continue counting the cigarettes while you wait for the next customer. Is this so difficult,” he asked her in Mandarin.
The cashier protested that she was not able to cope as she still had to serve customers, to which he countered, “You have such a long time over the whole day. You can’t finish it in eight hours?”
Guide dogs are the ‘eyes’ of the visually impaired, helping them navigate the complexities of public spaces.
However, Sophie Soon was turned away when she entered a Subway outlet at Kallang Wave Mall with her guide dog on Thursday (Aug 13).
Not only did the counter staff refused her entry into the store, but he also refused to talk to her and yelled at her for trying to get him to talk to her instead of her friend, she said.
In her Facebook post, the visually impaired swimmer from Team Singapore shared two clips of the encounter and wrote: “He insisted that Subway is a Halal restaurant and guide dogs are not supported by MUIS (they are, by the way).”
“Guys please share, this goes beyond being uneducated.”
To share their love and support for wildlife, members of the public can now adopt animals at Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS).
Launched yesterday, the Adopt an Animal programme lets adopters select from nine featured species, including Ah Meng, the Sumatran orang utan; Bunny, the two-toed sloth; and Matahari, the Malayan sun bear.
They can choose from three tiers of adoption contributions, comprising one-off donations of $200, $800 and $1,500.
All tiers include free admission tickets to the Singapore Zoo, discount vouchers for admission tickets and online recognition of the adopters.
Ms Isabel Cheng, senior director of partnership development at WRS, said the programme was introduced after people visited its parks and asked if they could do something for wildlife and “make meaningful contributions towards our animals and the conservation work we do around the world”.
“Initiatives like Adopt an Animal provide people with accessible ways in which they can play active roles in conservation and be inspired to care for wildlife.”
Besides the Singapore Zoo, WRS manages the Jurong Bird Park, Night Safari and River Safari.
We might not be able to control what happens in life, but we can certainly choose how to react.
And what one shopper witnessed in Jem shopping mall on Wednesday (Aug 12) might have begun as an unfortunate episode, but allowed her to see people from all walks of life banding together to help someone in need.
Facebook user Scarlett Chong recounted the emotional incident in a post that has since garnered over 3,300 likes and more than 1,800 shares.
Chong wrote about how there had been a “commotion” in the mall, adding: “A lady with dementia, had an unfortunate toilet episode, and her adult son, with anger management issues, were both in the handicapped cubicle.
“He probably lost control of his temper and the shouts drew a lot of attention.
A local startup aims to make our lives easier by providing a sustainable transport option for that last-mile journey between MRT stations and homes — that solution is electric microcars.
Singapore firm QIQ Global plans to launch what they call QIQ Pods — their two-seater electric cars — in Punggol, where residents might still face some trouble travelling about, even with LRT stations.
Though similar in concept to the electric car-sharing services offered by BlueSG, QIQ Pods will apparently be much cheaper to rent, according to CNA. It is estimated to cost $2 for an adhoc half-hour ride, and for those who’d be using the service multiple times daily, the subscription fee could be between $30 to $50 a month.
As Covid-19 continues to hold the performing arts and audiences at a distance from each other, technology has been used at times to bridge the gap between the stage and fifth wall. This is how The Future Stage came about.
Solving a murder in Mandai
To deal with the pandemic, some museums have gone digital, bringing their collections online .
Plays and concerts have also done so with Zoom being used to host virtual concerts and even the National Arts Council of Singapore has come out with measures to keep the Arts going. PHOTO: Instagram/bakchormeeboyIt was during the start of Covid-19 that Derrick Chew and Chong Tze Chien of Sight Lines Entertainment explored the use of technology for the performing arts for Murder at Mandai Camp, where they started monetising an interactive, online theatrical performance.
When two police officers tried to question a man in a Volkswagen at a carpark, he suddenly sped forward and rammed his car several times against a police car blocking his exit.
His actions caused the police car to shift, creating enough space for the man to squeeze his car past and speed away, leaving behind an injured officer, said eyewitnesses.
The drama unfolded at Bukit Merah Lane 3, a hub of automotive workshops, on Wednesday evening.
The police that said they arrested a 37-year-old man yesterday in connection with the incident.
The man was detained for his suspected involvement in a case of rash act causing hurt and a drug-related offence, the police said in a statement yesterday evening.
It did not mention where the man was arrested.
The police confirmed the incident happened on Wednesday while they were conducting a check on the man during an operation in Bukit Merah Lane 3.
During the check, the man was uncooperative.
“He accelerated his car and drove towards the police officers who attended to the incident, injuring one police officer, before driving off,” the police added.
SINGAPORE – In the early weeks of the coronavirus outbreak, Anthony Tan, the CEO of South-east Asia’s biggest ride-hailing firm, recalls how he mistook the infection to be a China-only problem, similar to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or Sars in 2003.
As Covid-19 turned into a pandemic, sending markets into a tailspin, the 38-year-old sought advice from titans among his investors including Softbank’s Masayoshi Son and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella.
The message was clear. No one knew how long the crisis would last or how deep it would be. Mr Tan, who co-founded Grab in 2012 with fellow Harvard Business School alumni Tan Hooi Lin, learnt he had to set thresholds and make decisive moves, even if they were unpopular.
“There’s no more debate, it’s just execution,” he said.
In June, the Singapore-based company laid off around 360 employees, just under 5 per cent of its headcount, after slashing discretionary spending.
“I remember tears couldn’t stop rolling down my face. I don’t ever want to go through it again,” Mr Tan said in his first interview since the layoffs.
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